“They’re in there.” Tullan waved his arm to motion down a long, dark hall with walls of dark gray blocks stacked on top of one another. The entrance into the hallway was blocked off by an iron barred door, which Tullan promptly unlocked using a key from his inventory so that Aegis and his companions could proceed. Two Kordas guards flanked the entrance, standing silently with spears at their side while eying the group.

“Thanks.” Aegis nodded to Tullan. He then opened up his interface and navigated to his livestream, where he quickly muted the audio. Following this, he was the first to step beyond the barred door, his companions following behind him. None said a word to each other as their leather shoes tapped on the stone floor, causing the sound to echo off the walls of the long, dimly torchlit hall.

It wasn’t long before they came up on prison cells flanking them on either side, the walls transitioning into iron-barred walls with locked doors. The cells were nothing special, simple beds and necessities beyond them. Most of the cells were labeled with the player who should’ve been serving time in them, but remained empty. As Aegis had come to understand it, it was common practice for players to just log out and do something else while their prison sentence ran itself down, despite some minor experience bonuses being granted to raising base stats while in prisons.

Aegis was not sure yet what to expect when he came up on the cells of Finley and his friends, but he was already prepared to see an empty cell and be forced to leave empty handed. Luckily, as he reached the end of the long hallway, he saw that not just Finley, but all four of his party members were present and accounted for, sitting in their cells silently.

As Aegis and the others approached, he saw Emerill and Joltblade both doing push ups, while Quiver was reading a book, and Cheryl and Finley had both pre-emptively stopped what they had been doing to approach the bars. Aegis walked up to Finley and briefly glanced at him before looking around at the nearby cells, then landing his eyes back on Finley.

“Where’s Simon’s cell?” Aegis asked him.

“There isn’t one.” Finley replied while glaring back at him stiffly, but after a moment he relented, shrugging and looking down at his feet. “He deleted his character.”

“Really?” Darkshot replied with wide eyes of disbelief, while the others made similar gasps of surprise.

“Yep. Wasn’t about to serve that long sentence, said it’d be faster to just reroll and start over. And, thanks to you,” Finley motioned to Pyri, “He says we owe him for the gear he lost by deleting his character, and that he’ll hunt us down and camp us until we repay him. You wouldn’t happen to be interested in becoming a bodyguard mercenary, would you?” Finley grinned at Pyri.

“No thanks.” She rolled her eyes at him.

“Was worth a shot. Still… wasn’t expecting anyone on this island would be able to beat him. He was my trump card…” Finley grumped as his eyes wandered back to Aegis. “You didn’t come down here to gloat, you’re not the type. So, what do you want?” Finley asked, and these words stirred up the others. Joltblade and Emerill stopped doing pushups while Quiver put away his book and approached the bars, leaning against them to get a view of Aegis and his party.

“You were down under the islands, in the mist, right?” Aegis asked.

“Ah.” Finley nodded, as if he already knew what Aegis wanted to ask now. “Yes, we were down there.”

“How? What’s it like down there?” Aegis asked him enthusiastically, unable to hold back his excitement despite trying. Finley glanced between Aegis and his party and saw Rakkan looking equally as interested, causing Finley to let out a huff of air and smile.

“The method we used to survive down there won’t be available to you. Just like you did quests for your light god, a few dark god churches and quest givers were discovered a while back. The network that we’re members of, they share information on secrets like that to help each other out, with the goal of finding the most optimal money making methods within each game we play.”

“Ah…” Pyri crossed her arms and smirked. “Which network are you guys a part of?”

“Sin Seekers.” Finley replied.

“Mhm. The biggest one, figures. And Simon?”

“That’s where we hired him from. If we don’t pay him back, they’ll kick us out.” Finley grumbled, while Aegis looked between Pyri and Finley with an expression of confusion, which Pyri picked up on.

“Sin Seekers is a network of gamers who play games with the sole purpose of finding bugs, exploits, or extremely efficient methods to make money using them. It can barely be considered ‘playing’, but oddly you’ll find some of the best players within those networks. They used to rely on hacks and bots heavily, but since the security of Simbox networks became government regulated and neigh unbreakable, they’ve recently turned to more gameplay oriented methods to achieve their goals… or so I’ve heard.”

“You know a lot. Were you once one of them?” Quiver asked her curiously.

“Nope. I’ve always been around streamers, so…” Pyri shrugged, getting a nod in response. “Streamers and Dark Network players tend to not get along very well.” Pyri turned to explain to Aegis.

“Why not?” Aegis asked her.

“We make money using methods no one else knows about. And… they’re usually frowned upon by the general public. Also, they drop in value dramatically once they become popular. Hence, we don’t like streamers streaming our stuff.” Finley replied.

“It’s kind of hypocritical, when you think about it.” Cheryl spoke up, drawing eyes towards herself. “You streamers get to make money by showing off the game to the public, being all charismatic or informative, but really you’re just cheapening the immersion and experiences the game world has to offer. Yet, the public loves you. Then we, who make money simply by taking advantage of what the game has to offer without broadcasting it to everyone, more often than not get hated for doing it.” Cheryl replied.

“You tried to destroy an island, and the gameplay experiences of thousands of players.” Lina glared at her. “Of course you’d be hated.”

“We were just playing the game. It’s not our fault that everyone on these islands weren’t paying attention to the world around them. There’s plenty of hints towards our actions and what's going on - Aegis was just the first one to open his eyes and notice them.” Cheryl replied while turning to smile at Aegis, but Lina quickly moved to stand between her and him so that she couldn’t lay eyes on him.

“Whatever.” Finley shook his head at her as if telling her to quiet down. “Some players in our network discovered the questline to bring down islands as a crusader class player for one of the dark gods, but didn’t bother with it due to the complicated process and the extreme III difficulty label. Me, on the other hand… I theorycrafted a way to pull it off with just a small group of five people, relying on unsavory methods. I pick an avatar, empower it using the people of the island so that the avatar gains enough power to start the invasion, then break apart the island's defenses from inside while preventing any key light god quest givers from triggering defense quests, using some clever uses of game mechanics.” Finley replied.

“Wait, what?” Aegis scrunched his eyebrows, looking for clarification.

“Heh, yeah, don’t tell him how you do that last part.” Joltblade chuckled.

“Basically, invasions are not meant to be easy to pull off. Nearly impossible, really - the game developers wanted to make it so that they’d be an exciting event to experience, but heavily weighted in favor of the defenders to win. The moment we get a quest to take out an island, all of the priests and high priests of the light gods on that island are supposed to start giving out quests to defend it… so you’d all know we were coming.” Finley replied.

“But none of them did that… Not even the Great Prophet Clara…?” Aegis looked at him confused.

“Yep. Because it triggers when I accept the quest to sink the island. But, I am given control of an Avatar of Darkness upon receiving the quest.”

“Ah… clever.” Pyri shook her head at him.

“Wait, I don’t get it?” Darkshot looked between them, confused.

“So basically, you get them to give you the quest, and just let it hang there in your peripheral vision for three months without hitting the accept button?” Aegis clarified.

“Yep. I just hit accept at the last moment, before the island sinks, when there are no light priests left to give out the quest. So, no one knows we’re coming.”

“That’s such a cheap tactic…” Rakkan said in disbelief.

“Then there’s the Avatar itself, as you saw first hand. I knew once you took me out, it’d probably be our loss, because despite having high levels and a gimmick, once you can overcome each Avatar’s gimmick, they’re mechanically fairly simple bosses. They’re designed to be easily stopped by a united island of players. The Juggernaut’s as well, they’re just big health sponges. So we were forced to use methods that would prevent the islands from being able to defend themselves properly.” Finley continued to explain.

“But Aegis stopped you guys.” Darkshot replied confidently.

“Yep. He did. And he did it all on camera, so our fragile method to sink the island and make millions of gold has been stopped.” Finley shrugged. “We’ll be off to find other methods once we get out of here.”

“If it ever involves attacking Kalmoore, or any of our friends, I’ll be there to stop you guys again.” Aegis replied firmly.

“Yeah yeah, relax, shattered healer, We won’t be coming back around here anymore.” Finley shook his head dismissively at Aegis. “Anyway, the dark cults and priests, they’ve got some elixirs you can drink that allow you to see through the dark mist. Once they start sending you down below the islands for some quests, they’ll give you a recipe for it.” Finley explained.

“Can you share the recipe with me?” Aegis asked him.

“No. Go learn it yourself.” Finley winced at Aegis with a hint of annoyance. Besides, even if I did, the creatures down there would tear you to shreds. There’s a lot tougher monsters than just reapers and abysslings lurking on the surface, and almost everything is level 200 or higher. You oughta go finish your advanced quest before you think about heading there.”

“What about Hrath’mir, is it still down there?”

“Yep.” Finley nodded.

“We couldn’t get close to it. We tried to, after Arallia went down and we saw the footage from your quest. Figured it’d be like, the ultimate end-game area filled with the best loot. But, it’s surrounded by really deadly creatures that didn’t seem to care that we were working with the Dark gods, and they killed us anyway.” Quiver explained.

“How high were they?” Rakkan asked.

“Dunno. I was level 150 when we went, and they were all question marks. So, at least level 201.” Finley shrugged. “But, that’s all we’ll be telling you about the land below the islands. Anything else you want to know, you’ll have to learn by yourself, or pay for it.” Finley held out his hand expectantly.

“Thanks. That’s all I’ll ask them.” Aegis stepped back away from the bars and his hand, causing him to sigh.

“You gotta ask for money before you start talking, not after.” Emerill grumbled at Finley from his cell across the hall.

“One last question… How did you know who I was?” Aegis asked, followed by a tense silence as all eyes turned on Finley, and Finley turned towards Cheryl.

“Don’t worry, it hasn’t leaked publicly. Cheryl only found out by impersonating Sapphire, and Quinn let it slip. We figured the rest out from there, but we didn’t tell anyone else. I thought, with you and Renault in the same party, you’d have a lot more in common with us than with streamers.” Finley shrugged. “If you joined us, using your skills and our knowledge, you could both easily achieve your goals, you know.” He smirked.

“No thanks.” Aegis replied quickly.

“Big mistake.” Joltblade spoke up. “You got skills, I’ll admit it,” He looked at Rakkan as Rakkan turned to face him, “But if you’re really gunning for Seraxus to destroy that sword, you don’t stand a chance. I fought him a few times myself, early on when the sword was weaker. We all did,” Joltblade motioned at the others.

“You mean, we tried to jump him to kill him so you could steal that sword.” Quiver clarified.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Joltblade shook his head at Quiver. “He didn’t just kill us once - we went back later with Simon joining us to help out, and he still killed all six of us. It ain’t just the sword, he’s insanely skilled. If you wanna beat someone like that’ you should accept Finley’s offer.” Joltblade motioned to Finley.

Hearing this, Aegis and his party began exchanging looks with one another, ending with Rakkan and Aegis staring each other in the eyes.

“I promised I’d help you take him out, but we don’t need their help to do it.” Aegis said to him, and Rakkan nodded back.

“Agreed.” Rakkan replied.

“Alright, your loss.” Joltblade shrugged.

“Thanks for the offer, and all the information you shared with us.” Aegis bowed respectfully.

“No problem. I hope I never see any of you, ever again.” Finley smirked, then waved before turning from Aegis’ and his party.

“I’m still a big fan, by the way. Even though you tried to drown me.” Emerill called out after Aegis as he turned and began walking away from their cells. His party began following him shortly after.

“Hey, obedient girl!” Cheryl shouted out to Lina, stopping her from walking away, the others stopping shortly after to turn and face Cheryl. “Sorry for the things I said, I didn’t mean them. I was trying to get a rise out of you.” Cheryl replied calmly, slowly lowering her head.

“Okay.” Lina replied coldly, before turning and walking ahead of Aegis and the others. Aegis glanced between Pyri and Darkshot who just shrugged back at him before they followed after Lina.

“Get anythin’ useful outta ‘em?” Tullan asked as he spotted Aegis’ group approaching him, leaving the long prison hallway.

“Yeah, a lot actually. They’re pretty talkative.” Aegis nodded.

“Heh.” Tullan smirked as he waited for them all to leave the hall, then shut and locked the iron door behind them. From there the group made their way up several long stone staircases until arriving at the main hall of the Kordas Barracks, where they were surprised to see Yumily, Kaito, and Kenji all waiting for them.

“Hey! We used your stream to find you here.” Kenji said while stepping forward excitedly. Kaito remained by Yumily’s side as she looked on nervously towards Aegis. Seeing her look at him like this, though, made Lina visibly anxious. Yumily seemed unable to look him in the eyes for long and kept turning to find other things to look at.

“Still not streamin’ yerself?” Tullan asked as he eyed Yumily’s strange behavior.

“Oh, no, I breached my streaming contract by canceling my concert in Savringard. I tried to tell them to stop scheduling me, given what was happening on Kalmoore, but someone seemed to block my requests for a break at VGN.” Yumily replied, somewhat grumpily.

“I’ve got a good idea on who was doing that.” Aegis turned to Pyri, who looked back at him with an expression of disappointment.

“I hope he really isn’t being that petty.” Pyri shook her head, speaking under her breath quietly so that only Aegis heard her.

“To do all that, just to help us out though… Thank you very much. If you hadn’t shown up when you did, we wouldn’t have made it.” Aegis smiled at her.

“Oh… it’s okay. It was nothing.” Yumily smiled while lowering her head, blushing.

“You saved Savika and many of our friends from Arallia, so it was the least we could do.” Kaito replied just as Kenji reached Aegis.

“We decided that you should have these.” Kenji said as he began pulling multiple items out of his inventory. “Some of it is crafting materials, we hope you’ll put them to good use. These are the items we collected from Jealousy after she was slain. We want you to have it.” Kenji said as Aegis began taking the items from his hands, ending with the glowing orange mastercraft item.

As Aegis began inspecting the item cards of the objects, his jaw dropped and his eyes went wide.

“Yes, that was my reaction as well.” Kenji smiled as he saw his face.

“Let me see too!” Tullan excitedly tried to peer at the item card of the objects in Aegis’ hand.

“This stuff…” Aegis cleared his throat as ideas flooded into his mind. “We’re gonna need a lot more voidsilk and mithral.”